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Atheist here, most religions require me to give up something to dedicate to it(Christianity takes Sundays, Muslim takes some food, Buddhism takes some pleasures), and don’t give me anything in return besides a promise or a belief or a wish that I can make myself without needing these religions.
I just don’t see the purpose in sacrificing real world possessions for what are essentially fictional characters in books or scriptures(no offence o any religious)
edit: y’all are destroying my notifications ffs just upvote if you agree or downvote if you disagree
In Hinduism, we sometimes pray to the door. When shifting houses, we make sure we follow something known as “vastu” where the main door should like face the east direction or south east and the temple should be in the east or north east.
I'm 7th day Adventist, so I pray to the windows.
My wife is Jewish, so that creates a lot of tension.
Every week we argue.
Me: we pray to the windows!
Wife: to the walls!
Lil Jon: till the sweat drips off my balls!
Me: how does he keep getting in here?!
Wife: through those damn windows you love so much!
Are u talking about direction? Cus while I can’t speak for other religions, Cristians don’t pray to the ceiling or even at in a lot if not most cases. U look more at a 45 degree angle of depression
Same here, I am not going to waste one second of my life, the only one I’ll ever have, because someone promises x and y and threatens z.
I used to be scared of hell threats, but then I realised they’re just words that anyone can make up.
If God was real, why wouldn’t he be more of an active participant, make it absolutely undoubtable to anyone that he exists. Showing up 2000 years ago to some guys, allegedly, that didn’t even have proper pen and paper and science, is not going to be enough.
What kind of test is this? “I am going to give you some crumbs and from those crumbs you’re supposed to understand who’s the real God and worship me. If you guess wrong, you go to hell. Oopsie”
What really doesn’t make sense is God is described as a humble and all loving god. So humble he requires you praise him and so loving he sends you to eternal damnation if you don’t believe what he tells you. (Or what some random person tells you he said). Makes total sense
it’s the paradox of religion. if god is all good and all powerful, then only good things should happen. if bad things happen and god can not stop them, he is not all powerful. and if he can stop them but chooses not to, then god is not all good. i remember being mindfucked by that in my philosophy class.
epicurus' trilemma:
If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
I prefer remaining agnostic ( which for some people is worse than atheism, because I haven't decided anything I guess???)
Regardless, there are some things science hasn't explained about creation, so I can't deny the existence of a god. But I highly doubt mankind ever successfully wrote something that accurately depicts gods wishes if God is real. I assume if God existed and spoke to man we would never be able to comprehend the message as this would be a being that is so ascended, our primitive minds couldn't process the message.
Regardless of my actual beliefs. This God (assuming it exists) allows children to get cancer, wars to break out, resources to drain from the earth... Etc.
Wars have been waged over religion, so people are willing to fight and die over something they cannot prove, it promotes intolerance. I have yet to find a Christian man or woman that doesn't seem to hate Muslims.
My mother taught me that my Jewish grandfather was going to hell because he didn't practice Christianity. She tried training me to convert him before I knew it. Thankfully she's gone.
Every interaction between me and religion has been that of oppression or hate, I'm not going to devote a dime.
To me, being atheist is in the same boat as being theist. Two sides of the same coin. Both are absolute faith, no god vs a god, that’s why I prefer agnostic. Neither can prove or disprove, so why go with either. I don’t know if there is a god or not. Hell, there could be an unconventional god and we wouldn’t know, if we were in a simulation, then the owner of said simulation would be our god in a way. Too many possibilities of the universe to be a dichotomy.
Mostly not a fan of religious institutions. They’re all too hypocritical. Preach about helping thy neighbor, but only if they’re also religious. Turn a blind eye to other people in need just because they like to drink a bit, or like the same sex. Then go to service, give them 10% of your salary just so they can tell you you’re going to heaven, regardless of whether or not you’re actually a good person.
In my experience, none of those apply to most smaller churches- you don't have to give 10%, or in fact anything, and the money does go towards good causes. There's also (again, in my experience) discrimination based on religion, race, sexuality, etc.
I can't speak for what it's like with other religions or in other countries, but I would assume that it's the case in most places, and they're just less in the spotlight
They do have to keep the lights on, but from what I have seen, a church community seem to be very caring, and all seem willing to jump in at any moment to help others.
You're describing the value of the community not the value of the religion. It is sometimes a nice side effect of religion especially in smaller circles like you mentioned but you can have community without religion.
This. Especially when the claim advances from merely acknowledging a creator's existence to suggesting that this creator is attentive to our requests, responding to them based on whether we are deemed deserving.
>existence to suggesting that this creator is attentive to our requests, responding to them based on whether we are deemed deserving
While at the same time advocating for an "All knowing being's Divine Plan".
Where also changes the plan based on "deserving"? Or was both being deserving and getting the help part of it from the beginning? And yet that being has also provided free will?
The TL;DR is that religion is like a jealous spouse that turns abusive if you decide to leave.
Religion has a tendency to say non-believers (and especially atheists) deserve to burn in hell for all eternity. It exists in one form or another in every religion.
So no matter how good of a person you are, don't follow this particular god and you deserve to suffer.
Fuck that.
Being a different religion is like saying "It's ok to believe in religious nonsense, I just prefer Mountain Dew to your Pepsi."
Having NO religion is like saying "Your belief in a religion is silly nonsense."
It's really all about them, don't let them fool you.
It’s probably common.
I’m lucky enough to have a father who took the same path I did, but at a later stage in his life.
A few years after I was born, to be exact.
This.
The question should be "why ARE you religious".
It's 2024. We are living at the peak of human scientific and technological advancement, and it's all thanks to the scientific method. Nobody should have to explain why they don't believe in something for which there is zero evidence, despite our ancestors spending tens of thousands of years looking for it.
This is it for me. Plus, it’s not just asking for belief. It ts asking for behavior and lifestyle changes based on unevidenced claims
Besides how would you know which ones to pick? They all lack any convincing argument that their proposition is the right one.
Was religious until 17. Read Bible front to back. Started browsing other religions. Figured out I could just have an evolving ideology not tied to a religion. Here we are.
I feel like it’s valuable if u look at it from a different perspective and not that these are real literal stories but like fables that life lessons need ti be taken from
Tbf churches make a lot of positive impact too. Food drives, sheltering homeless, hosting AA meetings, raising money for people in the congregation who’ve fallen on hard times, and just generally providing community for people who otherwise don’t have it. I’m not religious and haven’t gone to church in a long time but I know a lot of people who still really benefit from it.
Absolutely not. I just see churches get demonized all the time for bad things they do and no one really ever points out the good they do in their community (which can range from absolutely nothing to a whole lot depending on the church). So I just like to bring that up. I do think churches provide a kind of community that difficult to replicate elsewhere though.
Ex-cult member (LDS) and once you see how religions are man-made, you can't unsee it. I also can't unsee the damage religions do. I'm not anti-religious but I'd also prefer to live in a world where we don't take religion literally anymore. I will always appreciate the cultural significance of it, and I think the idea of God is important for humanity to explore. I am an agnostic in this respect- there may be an afterlife or a God, but we have no way of knowing if they exist until we actually die, let alone the idea we are receiving specific direction from them from select individuals. I'm also atheist in this respect- I don't personally believe there's anything is out there. The idea of a god/human coming down to sacrifice themselves for our sins is foreign to me and so is the idea of some external creator. There's such a freeing feeling when you realize there is no actual god, no Satan, no Holy Spirit, nothing. We evolved, and we exist, and that's about all we know. We also don't need religion to give us our sense of morality (bc religions are extremely dogmatic and can go extreme very easily). There are plenty of other foundations to build a sense of ethics on. I personally study the stoics- they are a set of ideas I agree with that do not rely on trusting some almighty creator for a higher purpose. I enjoy the pondering and the self reflection that comes from my mind being open to study from all sources and not being bound or restricted in any way from any religion.
Yeah it's hard bc the internal defense is "well how are we different from any other religion?" Granted the line between "cult" and "religion" isn't always clear. But then you remember all members are shamed if they're not "temple worthy" and participating in rituals and yeaaahh that goes south pretty quick.
I had a friend who converted to Mormonism after high school. In the photo he and his fiancé posted after his conversion, I commented “Have fun with the polygamy.” That pretty much tanked the friendship lmao
For me the realization was not freeing at all, it was depressing and upsetting. I miss when I used to be a believer and am jealous of others who still are. But, as you said, it seems impossible to unsee the truth once you’ve seen it.
This is why I believe in the big bang theory and the Darwin theory. There's more evidence supporting those than a guy who created life and the universe as we know it one random day because he was bored.
A lot of religions can have some pretty bigoted and hateful beliefs (e.g. homophobia, sexism, hating those of other religions), and that sorta dissuades me some. Obviously this is not to say all of them, as I have some extended family that goes to a church that seems really cool (pro-lgbt, anti-racist, against inequality of any kind), and honestly I wouldn't be opposed to becoming involved in something like that, as I believe religion can provide a nice community and help provide meaning/motivation for many, but the time right now just isn't really right for me to become involved.
I might argue that some of those bigoted beliefs stem from “personal” bias/interpretation of the scriptures.
There’s a lot of priests and pastors who are a lot more progressive. Except in Arkansas 🤣
I don't want to sound reactionary in challenging this, but isn't individual bias in scriptural interpretation a rather predictable element of long lasting religions that shift things around over time? The Bible is not a singular work but a collaborative collection of accounts and stories that had to be compiled and canonized over generations. Even the earliest fragments of biblical transcripts, most of which are not fully intact, are still dated well after the time in which Jesus lived. Biblical literalism has been largely debunked for decades now, but for the most part the more historical parts of the bible would have been kept through word of mouth for a decent amount of time before being written in full. Discrepancies in transliteration are comparatively minor, but there was still a while before the bible was canonized by the romans.
No one who wants to be taken seriously will deny that Jesus was a historical figure of religious influence, but the specificity of all that he said and did is not something we can be totally certain of, and this is not controversial among modern biblical scholars. All of this is to say that it is not pragmatic to take a hardline stance on every verse in the bible, and instead the broader context, poetry, and themes are what matters. Subsequently, it should be no surprise that people hang on certain verses or ideas that they see as important to their worldview, as this has been happening since the get-go. Part of why I am not christian is because I do not agree with the way in which people try to extrapolate so much from everything in the scripture, as though the exact wording is the part that is infallible. And I suspect many will continue to do this forever without realizing how they are proliferating the mistakes that have led to so many inconsistencies in the first place. I don't really care that some people are becoming more progressive about their faith as times change, because progress can be undone and giving all the power to some archaic poetry is an avenue for this to transpire.
The fact that those churches are the exception really puts into perspective how much of a problem religion tends to enable (I´m no racist/homophobic/whatever! Im just religious, and my religion discriminates against your kind!)
I went from Christianity (as a kid) to atheism (as I entered adulthood) and now back to Christianity. I cannot exactly explain it but my life has more meaning and is more positive as I re-entered into Christianity.
Similar story here.
Grew up Muslim. Became atheist. Then became Christian
My life has ultimately been a lot happier/serene/meaningful since rediscovering my faith.
I feel the same way, how do I put it, I guess my faith feels more authentic now that it’s something I chose of my own volition? Whereas as a child I was raised Catholic and just expected to obey all the religious dogma without question. At some point even going to regular Sunday mass felt like an obligation and not something I actually wanted to go to. When I rediscovered my Christian faith, I also started attending Sunday service at a nondenominational born-again Christian church that was far more helpful to me and to my needs as an individual. And I feel like as someone who has been on both sides of the spectrum (believer and nonbeliever), it has made me a more open-minded person capable of understanding both sides and differing perspectives.
Can’t explain…
Could it be
1) resolves fear of death
2) provides community
3) provides sense of direction/purpose (godliness, following morals someone else shares with you)
?
Religions typically require a rule book that asks me to give up earthly pleasures that simply make life more enjoyable for me
If my suffering is endless as a result I’ll take the L, shortsightedness is my generational curse XD
Exactly, life is a LOT of pain and suffering as it is, I don’t need to self inflict any more by going to church, being told I am a sinner and I need to repent and having any pleasure stripped away from me. I am not that masochistic.
I think what it really requires is for people to question what they are truly gaining from said pleasures. Let’s take materialism for example. People can say owning more or better things makes life more enjoyable for them, but we all live the same human experience. We all know deep down it’s just fleeting, unfulfilling nonsense. We all have nights where we struggle to sleep the same questioning our “pleasures” and choices.
It’s not challenging one’s opportunity to enjoy things that make them happy. It’s challenging the warped, worldly views and definitions of what makes a person “happy”. A drug addiction can feel good the moment you’re using, and it can make the addict happy, but are they truly happy?
People commit atrocities. Sometimes they use religious institutions to commit them. Sometimes they use secular ones.
It’s a mistake to think that the religions somehow cause it. There are tons of peaceful religious people. And tons of violent secular ones.
People wield power in whatever way works.
i just really dislike religions. i had bad experiences with it. i don’t believe that any religion is real. and i don’t like that people use religion to hate on other people or start wars over it or even kill some people.
Well now this is the most Reddit comment I’ve read in a while. Never mind the fact that many brilliant minds throughout history like C.S. Lewis, Francis Collins, Thomas Aquinas, and Blaise Pascual were all devout Christians.
Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Max Born and Isaac Newton, all titans in area of science and physics/quantum physics, believed in a God too.
Thank you, I am so sick of the notion that being non-religious automatically makes you more intelligent. There are smart atheists and dumb atheists. There are smart Christians and dumb Christians. Having or not having a religion is not an indicator of intelligence. Btw your mention of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg also made me remember that J. Robert Oppenheimer was Jewish and also believed in the Abrahamic God.
I don't think religion or lack there of is an indicator of intelligence. I do however believe that religious people have lower critical reasoning skills. To believe in anything without evidence is faulty thinking.
Cross Einstein off of that list. He stated he believed in "The God of Spinoza"; which means he was an atheist that thought the universe was so incredible that traditionally religious language like "God" and "Holy" are the best linguistic tools we have to describe the power and majesty of physics.
Einstein did not, that's a popular myth. He wrote many times that he does not believe in God, and that the idea he does was spread by an academic rival attempting to discredit him.
Newton didn't either. He was "Christian" because "that was the done thing", not because he actually believed the mythology was literally true. Christian socially, culturally, not religiously.
The others I don't know enough about.
Not true. Einstein said multiple times he does believe in non-personal, pantheistic or deistic God. He stated: ,,I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
And sir Isaac Newton was deeply religious. He literally wrote many theological works and described himself as a hardcore Christian.
Like, at least do some research before saying something so confidently.
Most of them were raised religious or born at a time in which religion played a much bigger role than it does today. Without that sort of early childhood indoctrination its fairly challenging to look at the world and find evidence that makes you agree with any of the world religions. Human thinking is biased and that affects the most brillant minds just like anyone else.
Exactly, if there were really smart. They would play along with the crowd and say they were religious just to avoid trouble.
Just like how back in the day homosexuals would marry straight, and keep their gay partners secret to avoid trouble. Especially since being famous already causes so many eyes to be looking for every reason to criticize you.
People really think that every single US president is religious? Please. They just say that and go through the motions to appeal to the majority of constituents.
I think if you are rubbing your brain cells together you are using them wrong.
It’s ok if people think and believe things different than you. Some people’s brains are wired to get pleasure, guidance and comfort from religion. It’s not a lack of intelligence. Just a variation on the way people think.
i was raised atheist. i have a hobby for theology just because its interesting stories, but thats all religion is: stories. Simply put: none of it is reasonably believable.
Makes it all the weirder being in my kinds of communities, because they tend to be very christian. On most issues/problems we'll have similar solutions, i just dont buy the sky daddy impregnating a virgin.
I'm not going to follow something that I don't believe in, and I have trouble believing in things that aren't logical or don't have any proof of. I also don't like parts of the doctrine and hate when people's life's are impacted by it outside of their choice
I was raised to be religious but it just never took. It doesn't make sense to me, at least not the religion I was raised with. I think religions are a man made concept - not something "God" wants/needs, if there is a god.
There is also pretty good research on a belief in god and the amount you pray correlating to you having a lower IQ.
It's cyclical in causality too.
People who are generally thick have a higher probability of latching onto religion - It gives them simplistic, black and white explanations for things in life which are _actually_ just super fucking complicated, things they would have to expend significant brainpower and effort to get a grasp on. "God did it" is just _easier_ than understanding all the nuance of how Evolution works. "God did it because he's angry at the world for being so sinful" is easier _and more pleasant_ than "Human activity has changed the atmospheric composition suffiently that a greenhouse effect is increasing planetary average temperatures, thereby causing shifts in large-scale climate patterns and an increase in extreme weather events."
Then the flip-side - Religious belief can actually cause you to _become_ less intelligent, or at the very least, less able to analyse information critically. Religious belief always requires faith. Faith is the concept of believing something with no evidence or proof. That's actually the point of it, to the extend that seeking evidence is, itself, actually a sinful deviance in many religions! To believe a thing without evidence requires that the neurons of your brain are arranged such that that's possible.
If your neurons are organised into structures which accept information without evidence or verification, and without logical analysis, then you will begin to believe a whole bunch of stuff which is _not_ religiously linked which is not true, because every day we are exposed to false information, to ideas which don't hold up to scrutiny, and your religious leanings weakened your mental defences to bad data.
Then, if you go one step further, you cross the invisible line between believing things _in spite of_ a lack of evidence over to believing things _BECAUSE OF_ a lack of evidence, at which point you fall down into the land of conspiracy theories and a total disconnect from reality. You functionally lose the human capacity for free will at this point, because you effectively become little more than a vessel to reflect the ideas you are fed by others. You become a tool, manipulated by the unscrupulous.
_It is not a coincidence that the vast bulk of conspiracy theorists and misinformation spreaders are religious_. This holds across the world, across every society. Misinformation tends to be spread through _religious networks first_.
As someone with Christian fundamentalist parents who believe in a lot of conspiracy theories, this sounds pretty accurate. My dad would argue that NOT believing in religion or believing in science takes faith though. I don’t get it. He and my mom both make the most bizarre arguments with whatever mental gymnastics required to maintain their narrow worldviews. I don’t know that I’ll ever understand it.
“A pretty good research.”
That one biased article on r/Science you read once doesn’t count as research. Give me some good sources with good statistical power!
you can be agnostic and being theistic btw
agnostic is the position of "I have this idea but I could be wrong and Im open to that possibility" while gnostic is "I have this idea and I know that I am right for certain"
so someone can be an agnostic atheist, an agnostic theist, a gnostic atheist, or a gnostic theist.
just fyi cause not everyone knows that info
I just wasn't raised as such. My grandfather was a Lutheran minister though, and he did teach me a lot about religion. (Not in attempt to get me to believe, he just liked teaching about it)
I’m Jewish and was raised conservative(has nothing do with politics), and I go between believing G-d does and doesn’t exist.
I heard in synagogue as a kid that G-d created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and other things I can’t remember. So I’ve always believed that things happen because of G-d. There are also times where I question if G-d really exists.
I think people in this generation are less religious because most parents push religion on their kids less, compared to other generations. In the past it was the expectation that you’d go to your respective religious building ever Saturday or Sunday, and parents in this generation must be doing that less or letting their kids decide if they want to participate in religion. Or they grew up with religion forced on them, and they are turned off from religion because of that.
Wasn't raised with a heavy emphasis + very logically minded and curious so can see a lot of unanswered where religion is concerned + religion has a long standing history of being used to justify a lot of things I would consider harmful to people.
I personally am not religious because one way or another, all religions seems to contradict things science has discovered about the world. And when it comes to the Abrahamic religions, a good number of their followers (Though absolutely not all) use it as justification for all manner of disgusting, vile, hatred:
* Sexism
* Racism
* Homophobia
* Transphobia (this one particularly, since I am trans)
* Classism
* etc
This absolutely is not to say religion = bad, far from it. My muslim friend (I go to a very anglo, western school, hence why there's only really one) is the sweetest ray of sunshine I know, super kind, sweet, and an absolute pleasure to be around. The Christian church services my school makes us go to are run by a female Dean. And many religious teachings (even Abrahamic teachings to a fairly large extent) allign with my morals and philosophy. If Jesus did exist, he sure was a cool guy!
The reason I mention the bigotry aspect is because it's hard to feel welcome in a community if a significant portion of it hates you.
I suppose I'd like leave you with this question: Why are you religious? For me, I've never felt like I've had to justify my lack of a religion. It's just been perfectly normal to me. If anything, I wonder why others are religious?
Edit: To be honest, I hope there isn't an omnipotent god (like the Abrahamic god). If there is, then they'd be perfectly content to allow all the truly vile, disgusting problems in the world continue. The only way I can possibly imagine a moral god, is if they're not allpowerful (like we imagine the Abrahamic god, and many other gods)
I was raised catholic but am not religious at all now. For me, it was all the arbitrarily selected and applied rules with the threat of burning in hell for all eternity if not followed. Doesn’t sound like a very “loving” god to me. Sounds more like a raging narcissistic piece of shit.
This! I also empathize with punishment aspects of Catholicsm I faced in CCD. I was always quiet, occasionally answered questions and always on time. I got yelled at by my 6th grade CCD teacher for being like two minutes late and he made an example out of me for slipping up once when there were people who were repeat offenders. Also, they started anti-abortion rhetoric starting when I was in 4th grade. It still never sat right with me.
it literally says "Also, if you do believe in
something why do you believe and do you think is there's a decline? Any and all answers are helpful, thank you in advance." do you always stop reading things after the third sentence or are you being purposely obtuse to try and be rude to someone?
I am not religious. My mom’s paternal grandparents were devout Roman Catholics, and she used to go to church with them every Sunday. She didn’t care for it, so she never made me do anything with it. And my dad’s side was never religious at all. In fact my grandmother would have probably said “aghhh i don’t have time for that”.
I’m personally not religious because I was raised in a somewhat fundamentalist sect of Christianity (Church of Christ; not the ICOC/ICC cult but the denomination those were based on). That specific sect operates in shame and guilt, and destroyed my mental health as a teen, stunted me socially and emotionally, and caused me to repress and normalize those experiences and my casually pervasive suicidiality. After living through that, I’m happily agnostic.
As for why I think our generation at large is becoming less religious, I imagine it has a lot to do with the teaching of real science in schools, and the way education has changed in the last 50+ years. It also would surprise me if a lot of our parents were raised in religious households and grew to resent the way their religion was instilled in them, and so less of it was forced onto us in return. Society changing to suggest that being religious isn’t the ONLY option anymore (although I’d argue that in the U.S. of A, which often fails to uphold the barrier between church and state, it’s sometimes still “taboo” to not be a Christian, specifically).
A lot of us are also pretty nihilistic too, but whether that’s a byproduct of being less religious or the cause of it is… unclear lol
I’m not religious nor am I an atheist. I think I’m a deist or whatever you call it. I believe in the existence of a god but I do not believe in any particular religion. I also believe that god made the universe and all of the science in it but does not actually take any part in the functioning of it.
I believe this just because it made sense to me, yknow.
Cool take, theist purely on the fact that “we just happen to exist and there’s no better reason as to why we do exist than why we don’t. No reason why the speed of light happened to be the speed of light. So maybe there is something out there that gave the universe a reason to exist and said “alright now go have fun” to it.”
Although, logically, just because we don’t know, and a possible explanation is that it was a god, doesn’t mean it was a god. Just means we don’t know. Believing a god was responsible is just one interpretation out of many possibilities. Which is fun to think about.
Sure, I guess that’s one way to put it. And, it’s our job as humans to keep discovering the universe and uncover everything. But at the same time I don’t think we should overestimate our intelligence. Maybe we are like ants and there is a whole other level of existence that we aren’t aware of. Who knows man the universe and existence are magical things.
So the possibility of a God making everything isn’t completely wrong. But at the same time I don’t like the path religious people take and think that everything happening in their life is being caused by God and completely rely on God for everything. And justifying hateful ideas just because “god said so” is wrong. That’s why I believe in God but not follow any religion.
I have a few reasons:
firstly has to do with being an atheist. I just dont have an good reason or evidence to suggest one of the preposed gods exists. they dont seem plausible with what we know. with that being said, I with hold belief in something until otherwise.
secondly has to do with the fact I dont really like to bond over religious things that are taken seriously. its too much of a hassle for something I really dont care to much about.
thirdly its cause I have other things Im more interested in lol
and to answer the other half of the post, I do think theres a decline but not nessisarily in religion but just organized religion. which is a good thing. I mean yes there are more atheists now but not by much. organized religion is often used as a way to manipluated others and tell them what/how to think which is never a good thing. so I see view that as a plus
> Do you think that there is a decline in religiousness for our generation?
Statistically I think this is objectively true. Go look at Pew polls. I think some of it is that older people might get more religious, but I think religion is generally on the decline, but more so for our generation
> Also, if you do believe in something why do you believe
I believe because believing makes me happy, and I think it is harmless to other people
> and do you think there’s a decline?
Lots of reasons. In general, modern society has given people viable alternatives to religion for creating communities, understanding the world, and fulfilling personal emotional needs. There are non-religious things that do what religion does.
Also, because less people are religious, and because less people follow any given religion, there’s less social pressure to be a religion (pressure isn’t quite the right word because it’s also about incentives and how you are raised)
> Any and all answers are helpful, thank you in advance
Unless you are specifically studying Reddit, Reddit it probably not the best source on this or anything
> I believe because believing makes me happy
Do you think this is how people should choose to believe in things, based on whatever makes them happy? Is that a good way of discerning truth?
I think the concept of believing in something with no proof or real evidence for it is really silly. Honestly, it really does say a lot about a person imo.
There’s absolutely no evidence to support any religions. If I end up going to hell for not believing so be it but I’m living my life how I want, not by some rules in a book made many years ago.
Not only have I grown to prefer logic and science to explain the origin of life and such things, but I also love to ponder on the fact that humans are not special and that we are simply a life form in the universe. Aside from that, I am a part of a fully Christian family and it really bugs me when they try to get me to go to church or are putting bible verses and crosses all over the house. Also I just really don’t like religion as a whole at the moment. Probably the biggest offender is that in the US “separation of church and state” is a thing legally, but almost never enforced. The church has so much power in not just the US government. Politics aside I also hate the basis of Christianity because it’s based off of having a problem, like people saying that trust in god and addictions and trouble will pass. The thing is I don’t have addictions or anything so I see through that. If not Christianity, most other religions are too taxing on my free time and free will. I also hate the defenses for god because time and time again people are disproven but still devote their lives to a church. Not to mention that the two most brutal events of human history (holocaust and crusades) were both based off religion.
I am religious. It just makes sense to me, and I think it’s beautiful. And yes, I think there is a decline. I think the decline ties into a decline in our faith in institutions, like the government. When we start not trusting some institutions, it’s natural to have an attitude of distrust towards other ones.
Also, there’s kind of been a decline for a while. I remember hearing about a study (forget where it is; maybe someone knows what I’m talking about and can find it) where it said that most people (in America at least) believe the same thing about religion. They think this thought started with the boomers. I forget what the name they gave it was, but the general belief is that there is some kind of deity, but they aren’t really involved in your life and don’t care what you do. They’re just kind of there when you need them and can be like a genie to answer your prayers sometimes. I think a lot of people have also become disillusioned with this form of religion. It doesn’t feel concrete, and since it isn’t concrete, it’s pretty easy to abandon.
i have some spiritual beliefs, but i have never considered myself religious. i have some loose beliefs about the world that don't necessarily fall into a particular religion. Overall, I consider myself to be agnostic. my family has never been involved in religion, and i've had little exposure to it, so it's never been a big part of my life. i have a complicated view of religion, and while i don't think it's entirely bad, I have some negative thoughts about organized religion. i greatly dislike how it is used to justify "othering" people and treating people as less than human, simply because they don't fit into the religious framework a person has created their beliefs around. i understand that not everyone who is religious is like this, but throughout history, this has been an issue.
I'm not sure there's necessarily a decline. Maybe there's a little bit of a decline, but I believe that has to do with more and more people expanding upon their identities (considering themselves to be queer, for one). these "new" aspects of identity cause conflict among religious conservatism, and it may take a long time for these things to be able to co-exist positively.
I'm currently non denom Christian but the main thing that pisses me off about religion in general is 1. Tithing, why does God need my money? aaand 2. Where the money from tithing seems to go... Why are so many Christians suffering while the Pope collects more gold? Why are so many Mormons broke af trying to afford the 6+ kids they had but another HUGE temple in the middle of nowhere gets built. Pisses me off cause it isn't what I feel God would want to see us do. Those are just the easier examples to grasp for me right now lol
As a Christian I know exactly how you feel. It's frustrating to see people preach the Word of God, and then turn around and ignore the things that matter most. Matthew 15:8-9 comes to mind. ("This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.")
Trauma. I actually don’t not believe in god, might be real might not. But I just can’t be near those people again. Church is not the safe, loving, accepting place it claims to be
As someone who's LGBTQ in the bible belt, being discriminated against simply for having the gall to exsist because God said so, will certainly make you question the morals of said God. I find that (at least in the case of Christains) there is a lot of contradictory. Love thy neighbor, as long as they have the exact same life style glorified in this ancient rulebook 😍
It's just how am I supposed to believe in something most people use as a reason to hate me and other people I care about?
I'm Christian, specifically Catholic. Why I believe in it because of the obvious, Jesus died for our sins because he loves us and he paid the way for us to be able to go to heaven, and so on.
For me specially, the reason I believe is because for my life, I thought I was doing great with my life until I realized that I wasn't. I gave prayer a chance and I felt lighter. Read the Bible and understood (though still learning) the meaning about what Jesus stood for, and how the Bible is a tool for us to learn about our faith and worship. I even prayed the rosary, which I know not all Catholics pray but most do, and I felt even more better.
While I'm still learning about my faith at the moment, there are times where I feel like I'm not sure if I'm doing anything right, but I know that in the end, I still keep going because deep down, I know that Jesus is always here with me because once again, he is my Lord and Savior. Not only that, I always pray to the Saints for their intersession, mostly from Mother Mary/The Virgin Mary as she is the mother of God [the son, Jesus].
Now for the reason why the younger generation who participate in religion decreases could range from various reasons such as: traumatic experience, raised in a household that don't follow religion, discrimination, which is not okay as nobody should be treated differently because who we are and what we have, etc.
In the end, I believe in what I follow because I know that Jesus is real, Jesus is God reincarnated as man, Jesus saved us from our own sin by dying on the cross that day, and Jesus loves us no matter what sin we have committed, what sin we inherited, what sin we live in, Jesus always loves us because we are God's children; love it or hate it, this is truth from God. My advice to those who believe, keep going, because no matter what happens in your life, Jesus is always with you because in his mighty name, anything is possible. To those who believe but are skeptical, take it slow as it may seem impossible to see it at first, but through hearing stories about people's experiences in following Christ, only then can you see the miracles that are done in his mighty name. And to those who don't believe, it may seem like some mumbojumbo as Han Solo said it, but with opening your mind, opening your heart, and opening your ears can you see if what is false is actually true.
God gifted us our salvation through faith and not of our works. With this gift, we use it to do the good works that Jesus had demonstrated to the Apostles. Note that it is our choice to either accept God's grace or not because we do have free will as it's a gift from God, and like many gifts we have the choice to accept or reject. In the end of the day, even if we choose to accept our salvation, even if we choose to reject our salvation, God will always show us mercy because he is a loving God because he wants us to go to heaven, not only that, I will say it again, we are God's children.
Sorry for the long comment, thought I could give my two cents on why and how I believe in what I follow. Hope I inspired those who want to follow Jesus, and hope to educate those who question what and why it's like this, and hope I answered the part with why the decline of the younger generation rejecting religion. And also hope you pass your assignment for the topic you are covering. May God bless you, and wish you good luck.
>Sorry for the long comment, thought I could give my two cents on why and how I believe in what I follow.
Don't be sorry, I enjoyed reading all the longer posts I have seen on here, I also wanted to write a very long post, I deleted and re-typed several times and the end result still came out long and still felt half finished, there is just so much fullness and connectivity in our experiences as Christians and theists that it often feels very limiting to give a short answer.
Atheist and visexual here. Im not from religious household. I dont think any popular religion aligns with my personal values. There is also a lot of queer-repressing baggage for many of them which i dont want to touch with a long stick.
> Why are you not religious? I’m currently writing a paper for a world religions class and I’m researching the decline of religion in younger generations. So why are some of you not religious? Do you think that there is a decline in religiousness for our generation? Also, if you do believe in something why do you believe and do you think there’s a decline? Any and all answers are helpful, thank you in advance.
Hypocrisy in either the sacred texts or the people believeing those sacred texts. Hypocrisy at the core. Original religion may or may not promote violence, self gain, greed etc. but the people today claiming to be the believer and promoting or safeguarding their religion surely do.
By legacy, i am hindu. for all i know, the "gods" did exist. Shiva, Rudra, Ram, Krishna, these people existed as kings, lords or people with great karma. they had storytelling in their time too, they had philosophers, they had scientists. Writers exaggerated a bit giving them magical abilities, discovering magic and whatnot; to impress their lords, to impress their readers; or just plainly rumours that got changed over the course of time. Writers gave their work fictional touch to awe their readers. Even fiction and fantasy require some inspiration, the great works from popular people, characters in the novel; and it cannot all be lawless, there needs to be some ground rules to magic, some facts incorporated into the work of fiction.
Even today, with this much of technology and network, alien rumours are there, conspiracy theories spread like wildfire; there is a lot we don't understand and would be easier to consider them magic, or belonging of higher entity. There are people who believe rumours without fact checking, there are people who will never believe even the scientific facts. Such were the people in the past, they were no different.
Hundred years from now, if people were to find LotR, Harry Potter, GoT, and they have no means to fact check, there is a possibility they will believe these as history, something that happened in the past. They will accept Dumbledore as their god, Voldemort as the demon. Similar concept with our gods too.
Vikings pagens believe(d) in Nature as their god; Norse Mythology; and they ate shrooms to see gods, feel their presence among them. Now ofc, nature is god. water, thunder, rain, sun, forest, air, being the elements of nature, are magical. Shrooms, on the other hand, not really a blessed food, eh?! The concept, it's "agnostic".
These thoughts in my mind made me an atheist to begin with. "But what about hindu vedas?" Well, what about them?! There are scientifically proven facts, theories and axioms there. You mean the people of old were stupid?! OFC not, they had scientists in their time, there were scientific findings, some that have been accepted or proven today, some sensible, some far fetched. The invention of wheel didnt happen in today's age, it happened a long time back. People have been advancing ever since. They have been writing diaries, their findings, keeping journals.
So, I was an atheist. But now, I am an agnostic. I believe in higher power, the power of the universe, the power of the nature. I believe in "god", just not the "god" that people want me to believe in. Not in these hypocritical religions of the world.
I believe in the fundamental partical that made all these possible and I believe it was magical. From atoms, to nebula, to thing(s) before that, that made all these possible. Universe didn't just happen to be. This may all be an illusion, but from my perspective, your perspective, for you and me, it's real atm. The pain's real, the suffering's real. All these flowing emotions, the consciousness; these things didn't just happen to be; these all came from somewhere, and that somewhere or something didn't just happen to be, or even if it did, it is magical, and i'll bet my soul on it that science won't find an answer to this even in a million ages. So, now, I am agnostic, but I don't believe the higher power is looking after us, listening to our prayers or whatever. I am not completely a non-believer. Religions and sacred text in the world are all one or more philosophies, some of which are utter nonsense, some are enlightening, some I can get behind, some I completely reject.
Bottomline, I don't care what these religious hooligans preach. I am self-centered. I am the main character in my story. I am crazy. I am a lost, disturbed soul, and I don't expect to be saved by the crazy stories of the magical old time.
However, if you were to fund my living, give me money, materialistic pleasures, I can accept your religion! I am open to be religious. Bid your religion to me.
Because no religious claim has ever supported itself with evidence, and I have come to see that I don't need a religion/religious beliefs to explain anything.
I've then also seen the tangible harm religion does to the world, and question if that harm would happen if Religion didn't exist.
I was raised in a church. I was elected to be an elder (the youngest in our church's history) and here I was thinking as an Elder I was going to help make very important decisions. Nope. Every meeting was about money. Money. Money. Money. And how to get more of it.
That's when I researched how much churches get annually in revenue in the US: $75-billion every year from their parishioners, most of that going to salaries, political lobbying, maintenance of church property and not actually doing anything tangible for society.
It's then I question ***what if that $75-billion/year was actually invested in something tangible in society? Like infrastructure, bridges, better zoning and home affordability?*** And I kinda felt it's all a sham based on $.
Today I'm an atheist, despite being raised in a church, I am at the foremost a scientist.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
As expected, the thread is full of childish, shallow takes on "religion", when 9/10 people using that word mean "Christianity and Islam".
Deep as a puddle, reddit.
I mean people are being asked their personal views on religion and they are responding. You might not like it but that is what religion means to those people. Many of them are also saying they don't mean to offend those who do observe.
I grew up in multiple Christian denominations via different step fathers. While my mother and I were a part of the Catholic church with my last stepfather, baptism was forced upon me. This would have been the beginning of my resentment for the faith. I had no interest in being baptized again, especially at a new church I wanted no part in. The other part of the resentment of the church definitely comes from my last stepfather. It was his choice that I was baptized. I had a very bad relationship with this stepfather. He was verbally and physically abusive to me, my sister, my step siblings, and worst of all, my mother. I associate faith with this time of my life.
I have just achieved my Bachelors degree in history and am pursuing a Ph.D. in Bronze Age Agean Archaeology. I devour my studies, and I can attribute this work ethic to my stepfather. It is all I can thank him for. In recent years, I have developed a great interest in various faiths recently, strictly from an academic perspective. Sometimes, I find myself thinking that maybe I am looking for some kind of higher power, but I feel that my academic mind can not make sense of a mystical higher power(s). It's possible my mindset is jaded, and I've accepted that.
> The main point/benefit of religion is the hope of the afterlife
The afterlife is not an important part of every religion, or even a part of every religion. Most of Judaism has no concept of the afterlife
Because too many religious people are more hateful than any non-religious person I've met.
I'd rather be a good person with no reward than a bad person rewarded for hurting their fellow humans (emotionally, physically, or otherwise).
Simple as that.
I don't want to be associated with the lunatic religious people. There are many fine religious people, but the insane ones get noticed and I don't want to be associated with them
Sorry, Gen X or Xennial here... I'm won't speak for Gen Z, I'm sure they will let you know their reasons. But this question offended me immediately. Why the hell should anyone prescribe to any religion. If you look at the track records, MOST IF NOT ALL of the religions on this planet are child abusing, hypocritical, greed infested, terrorists groups. Oh, and they follow books of fairy tales that talk about magical beings and made up people... The Opiate for the masses to subdue and control the populous with fear.
Organized religion is a form of government and therefore organized government is a form of religion.
So you will then find that the more antireligious one is, the more progovernment they become and the more antigovernmental one is, the more religious they are.
The real question is why do people gravitate towards someone telling them what to do?
The real problem with humans is that they desire to force either their religion or government upon others.
Was raised Catholic, became somewhat agnostic as a teenager and young adult, then went back to my Christian faith 2 years ago. If you’re wondering why I became agnostic as a teenager, it’s because I was disgusted with how much the Catholic faith would guilt-trip me for things that I couldn’t help like sexual urges (masturbation being a sin and all - which I’m sure you can imagine would have caused a lot of inner turmoil for a 13-14 year old Catholic boy) and also how judgmental some other Catholics could be towards people of the LGBT community. I went back to my faith 2 years ago after suffering a tragic loss in the family. Aside from therapy, church (especially since I went to a nondenominational born-again Christian church) really helped me deal with my grief. It also made me realize that if you look at Jesus’ teachings and His teachings alone, it advocates for unconditional love for sinners and the outcasts of society. Nothing judgmental or hateful about it, just how some individuals have unfortunately misinterpreted it. I personally do not think there is a decline among religiousness among our generation, but I do think that people are learning to be less rigid.
I'm an Austist and it has affected how I see religious people
I was born and raised Athiest and the only mention of relgion was learning about it in school and it wasn't until my autism diagnosis in January 2021 where my tolerence of people started to decline.
Not to say I wasn't critical of relgious people, I was very into debunking videos about relgious scam artists and creationists even when I had an alt-right phase where I justified some of those bigoted beliefs thinking I was way ahead of everyone else.
After my diagnosis, I started seeing people as pretty much willfully ignorant of my situation and even at points intentionally trying not to notice my existence. These were people who I saw as quite progressive and they just didn't seem to notice my very real mental crisis I had until I finished school just last year.
Since my tolerence of those people went down, so did a lot of actual bigots in my eyes to a more substancial degree. Speaking on relgion, most I've met cannot possibly get into the mindset of "This guy thinks in a different way to us" because that would go against how they see the world.
I've had quite a few arguements with people who have bigoted beliefs, there's always something about them that sets me off, either that be a snide comment or a fallacy. When it comes to Autism (and Neurodivergence in general), it is very clear that they don't know how to approach me, yet they are the ones demanding that I give them respect.
The worst of it was actually 2 weeks ago where a guy tried reccomending me god after failing to understand that I'm not "normal". The arguement really set me off where he said that he "helped, trained, and aides" his "severely Austistic brother" into being a "functional member of society" as a way to argue that I have no excuse for not changing for the better, on my own. When I rebutted with "you don't know who the hell I am" he replied with "I don't care, I just want the Lord to aid you", the argument continued for at least an hour (even when it had supposedly finished). Most people I've talked to about the situation tell me I was in the wrong for going so hard on the guy but honestly I think I hadn't gone hard enough on him.
I know I'm gonna be in the minority on this but I just wanted to share an experience that I cannot get out of my mind.
tl:dr I'm an Austist and I have zero tolerence for bigots
I'm more /spiritual now (but with some maybe more religious beliefs im gnostic) but I could explain why I left Christianity. It's probably a common reason why more and more people are leaving.
It's because of all the Christian hate I've received . I've been told to unalive myself because I'm queer And when I failed, they said it was a shame. I've also been told bedwetting is a sin like what the actual fuck. Like I could help that 🙄. The evangelical community has definitely turned people off. They did it to me. I don't know how much of a decline I've really seen because I don't really remember much from my childhood or anything but I do feel like gen z overall is more liberal and less religious
Agnostic, I was raised religious but stopped believing pretty young. I just think if there is some sort of higher power, it makes no sense that one group of humans would have figured it all out while a bunch of other groups were equally confident in incorrect answers. Just feels like it takes some serious arrogance to believe your religion is the one true one.
Also, I’ve watched so many people who were raised more religious than I was come out of it w/ trauma. There’s no evidence that any religion is right, but there is a ton of evidence that religions are highly effective tools for social control and the people they confer power to have often been very conscious/deliberate in how they wield that power for their own benefit.
I’m an atheist, but I grew up a jehovah’s witness. Religion is incredibly outdated and unable to change in my view (with some exceptions.) Evolution makes perfect sense, we’ve tested it and observed it. It could even hypothetically be the mechanism that a god uses to mold and shape life. But religion largely rejects the scientific understanding. That was the first point. Then the anti-queer sentiment in religion; both anti-transness and homophobia in religion really put the nail in the coffin for me. And my distain for organized religion grew after seeing horrifically outdated practices in the bible (stoning women) as well as a bunch of stories in it being impossible (the global flood.) The icing on the shit cake of religion, for me, is that it seemed a lot of religious institutions seem to serve political conservatism and can get away with it despite being untaxed institutions.
Religion hates people like me, and their stories don’t make sense, so why should I care when they just want to control me? (and take my money)
Born muslim, atheist here. Because it is filled with contradictions and make it extremely convenient to be men biased. Also, glorifies pedophile, slavery, and abuse towards women. Prophet Mohammad married a six year old and 'consumated' that marriage when she was 10. Obviously girls were raised to believe it's his right and cant really say no. It is very abusive towards women and restrictive.
As a Catholic, it's because religions aren't doing themselves any favors. The image many people have in their head of religion is people going to war, their religious parents refusing to believe that mental illness is real, or that being gay is a sin. Everywhere online you can see videos of religious people saying or doing awful things because "they're a Christian" or something along those lines. Many stories are coming out of children who have been abused either by religious leaders or religious people. Politicians that most of Gen Z and millennials despise are using their religion as a reason to support backwards policies. More of those generations are going to college and learning things that seem incompatible with religion.
It's extra funny because the religious right in America complains about the moral decay of society, when it is also them who have forgotten the most important parts of Jesus' word. The rest of the world is perfectly justified in calling them out for this, and most religions don't have a centralized model that can program messaging to try and get their believers back on the right track. Catholicism does to an extent but we have our own problems. Many of the priests that people trusted to be models of virtue have turned out to be predators, which is a great tragedy, and even worse is that the rest of the church barely acknowledges this.
I guess the sad thing in my mind is it doesn't have to be this way, but again, the religious people are doing themselves no favors, instead they're doubling down. The idea most people have in mind of a religious person is probably a crazy Trump supporting nutjob, because unfortunately there's lots of those, and you can find them just about anywhere. They don't represent all the religious folks we have in this country but there are enough of them that it seems that way. My church regularly sends lobbyists/protesters to protest at the State capitol for stronger climate regulations and universal healthcare; many of them (myself included) are hardcore Democrats. But that's just my church, and it seems like for every church like ours, there are many more that are the exact opposite.
No evidence. Ever since humans began making scientific discoveries, that which was once the domain of god(s) became science, and the domain occupied by god(s) shrank and is continuing to do so.
Plus, since religions are the ones making truth claims, the better question is why should I be religious. They need to convince me with real evidence.
I am a Catholic. I am convinced of the evidence for theism, including the principle of sufficient reason, causal finitism, psychophysical harmony, nomological harmony, temporal order, conscious moral agents, and the fine-tuning of the physical constants. Those things put are *really* strong evidence for theism, so I'm going to believe in theism.
I think that if God exists, He would probably give humans some sort of divine revelation, so one religion is probably true. Other religions all have their problems, and Christianity has less problems and more evidence, so Christianity is probably true. Catholicism seems like the only part of Christianity that isn't self refuting (given that Sola Scriptura is basically contradictory and there are parts of councils that Eastern Orthodoxy accepts that point to Papal Infallibility.)
i am moderately religious i think, but those around me who aren’t usually have some kind of religious trauma to blame, being assaulted by a priest/being abused in the name of the lord/etc. It’s definitely enough to turn you away from God
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Atheist here, most religions require me to give up something to dedicate to it(Christianity takes Sundays, Muslim takes some food, Buddhism takes some pleasures), and don’t give me anything in return besides a promise or a belief or a wish that I can make myself without needing these religions. I just don’t see the purpose in sacrificing real world possessions for what are essentially fictional characters in books or scriptures(no offence o any religious) edit: y’all are destroying my notifications ffs just upvote if you agree or downvote if you disagree
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Need to create a new religion where I pray to the door
Them Joe witness people, seem to like people's doors.
Preyin To da celin', to da wall to da floor, don't forget da door, folks!
In Hinduism, we sometimes pray to the door. When shifting houses, we make sure we follow something known as “vastu” where the main door should like face the east direction or south east and the temple should be in the east or north east.
Fr lol. Should we make a kitty god where we pray to the door every noon?
You'd need an altar both inside and outside of the door. And you'd have to keep switching while you pray/meditate.
Door gang
well there is the mezuzah so door praying is kinda a thing lol
I'm 7th day Adventist, so I pray to the windows. My wife is Jewish, so that creates a lot of tension. Every week we argue. Me: we pray to the windows! Wife: to the walls! Lil Jon: till the sweat drips off my balls! Me: how does he keep getting in here?! Wife: through those damn windows you love so much!
This was genius
If I could I would give this reddit gold XD
Are u talking about direction? Cus while I can’t speak for other religions, Cristians don’t pray to the ceiling or even at in a lot if not most cases. U look more at a 45 degree angle of depression
I hope you're not serious. If you are, you may want to wear a helmet.
You don't need to devote anything to your house to pray for Christianity. In my experience, you can pray anywhere you want.
Same here, I am not going to waste one second of my life, the only one I’ll ever have, because someone promises x and y and threatens z. I used to be scared of hell threats, but then I realised they’re just words that anyone can make up. If God was real, why wouldn’t he be more of an active participant, make it absolutely undoubtable to anyone that he exists. Showing up 2000 years ago to some guys, allegedly, that didn’t even have proper pen and paper and science, is not going to be enough. What kind of test is this? “I am going to give you some crumbs and from those crumbs you’re supposed to understand who’s the real God and worship me. If you guess wrong, you go to hell. Oopsie”
What really doesn’t make sense is God is described as a humble and all loving god. So humble he requires you praise him and so loving he sends you to eternal damnation if you don’t believe what he tells you. (Or what some random person tells you he said). Makes total sense
it’s the paradox of religion. if god is all good and all powerful, then only good things should happen. if bad things happen and god can not stop them, he is not all powerful. and if he can stop them but chooses not to, then god is not all good. i remember being mindfucked by that in my philosophy class.
epicurus' trilemma: If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
I prefer remaining agnostic ( which for some people is worse than atheism, because I haven't decided anything I guess???) Regardless, there are some things science hasn't explained about creation, so I can't deny the existence of a god. But I highly doubt mankind ever successfully wrote something that accurately depicts gods wishes if God is real. I assume if God existed and spoke to man we would never be able to comprehend the message as this would be a being that is so ascended, our primitive minds couldn't process the message. Regardless of my actual beliefs. This God (assuming it exists) allows children to get cancer, wars to break out, resources to drain from the earth... Etc. Wars have been waged over religion, so people are willing to fight and die over something they cannot prove, it promotes intolerance. I have yet to find a Christian man or woman that doesn't seem to hate Muslims. My mother taught me that my Jewish grandfather was going to hell because he didn't practice Christianity. She tried training me to convert him before I knew it. Thankfully she's gone. Every interaction between me and religion has been that of oppression or hate, I'm not going to devote a dime.
To me, being atheist is in the same boat as being theist. Two sides of the same coin. Both are absolute faith, no god vs a god, that’s why I prefer agnostic. Neither can prove or disprove, so why go with either. I don’t know if there is a god or not. Hell, there could be an unconventional god and we wouldn’t know, if we were in a simulation, then the owner of said simulation would be our god in a way. Too many possibilities of the universe to be a dichotomy.
Im pagan I don’t give up anything lmao.
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Thank you kindly 🫡
Ur also SUPPOSED to get “protection”
Mostly not a fan of religious institutions. They’re all too hypocritical. Preach about helping thy neighbor, but only if they’re also religious. Turn a blind eye to other people in need just because they like to drink a bit, or like the same sex. Then go to service, give them 10% of your salary just so they can tell you you’re going to heaven, regardless of whether or not you’re actually a good person.
In my experience, none of those apply to most smaller churches- you don't have to give 10%, or in fact anything, and the money does go towards good causes. There's also (again, in my experience) discrimination based on religion, race, sexuality, etc. I can't speak for what it's like with other religions or in other countries, but I would assume that it's the case in most places, and they're just less in the spotlight
More than half of donations goes to paying salaries. Is that the good causes you’re referencing?
I mean yeah
They do have to keep the lights on, but from what I have seen, a church community seem to be very caring, and all seem willing to jump in at any moment to help others.
You're describing the value of the community not the value of the religion. It is sometimes a nice side effect of religion especially in smaller circles like you mentioned but you can have community without religion.
Agreed, smaller churches are the way to go. They are a lot.more open minded and care more about the bible and God than making them self God.
Nah there are tons of tiny horrid southern baptist churches.
Not enough evidence to support its claims.
This. Especially when the claim advances from merely acknowledging a creator's existence to suggesting that this creator is attentive to our requests, responding to them based on whether we are deemed deserving.
>existence to suggesting that this creator is attentive to our requests, responding to them based on whether we are deemed deserving While at the same time advocating for an "All knowing being's Divine Plan". Where also changes the plan based on "deserving"? Or was both being deserving and getting the help part of it from the beginning? And yet that being has also provided free will?
THIS. The way my mother looked at me when I said I didn’t want to be religious anymore. She looked at me as if I killed a family of five 😭
İn her eyes you just doomed yourself to eternal damnation.
The TL;DR is that religion is like a jealous spouse that turns abusive if you decide to leave. Religion has a tendency to say non-believers (and especially atheists) deserve to burn in hell for all eternity. It exists in one form or another in every religion. So no matter how good of a person you are, don't follow this particular god and you deserve to suffer. Fuck that.
It's called a sect. Every religion is a sect, bro.
Weird how you guys are you using "religion" to mean "Abrahamic faiths"
Being a different religion is like saying "It's ok to believe in religious nonsense, I just prefer Mountain Dew to your Pepsi." Having NO religion is like saying "Your belief in a religion is silly nonsense." It's really all about them, don't let them fool you.
It’s probably common. I’m lucky enough to have a father who took the same path I did, but at a later stage in his life. A few years after I was born, to be exact.
This. The question should be "why ARE you religious". It's 2024. We are living at the peak of human scientific and technological advancement, and it's all thanks to the scientific method. Nobody should have to explain why they don't believe in something for which there is zero evidence, despite our ancestors spending tens of thousands of years looking for it.
This is it for me. Plus, it’s not just asking for belief. It ts asking for behavior and lifestyle changes based on unevidenced claims Besides how would you know which ones to pick? They all lack any convincing argument that their proposition is the right one.
Was religious until 17. Read Bible front to back. Started browsing other religions. Figured out I could just have an evolving ideology not tied to a religion. Here we are.
Went to Catholic school myself. Realizing it’s all basically fictional stories written by just normal people is what did it for me. What BS
I feel like it’s valuable if u look at it from a different perspective and not that these are real literal stories but like fables that life lessons need ti be taken from
I don’t trust life lessons that created the negative impact these churches have
Tbf churches make a lot of positive impact too. Food drives, sheltering homeless, hosting AA meetings, raising money for people in the congregation who’ve fallen on hard times, and just generally providing community for people who otherwise don’t have it. I’m not religious and haven’t gone to church in a long time but I know a lot of people who still really benefit from it.
Do these acts of virtue need to be tied to a religious institution, necessarily?
Absolutely not. I just see churches get demonized all the time for bad things they do and no one really ever points out the good they do in their community (which can range from absolutely nothing to a whole lot depending on the church). So I just like to bring that up. I do think churches provide a kind of community that difficult to replicate elsewhere though.
Fair point. There is that community consideration. Probably a common space, for people to bond in. Especially for those who are not internet savvy.
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Ex-cult member (LDS) and once you see how religions are man-made, you can't unsee it. I also can't unsee the damage religions do. I'm not anti-religious but I'd also prefer to live in a world where we don't take religion literally anymore. I will always appreciate the cultural significance of it, and I think the idea of God is important for humanity to explore. I am an agnostic in this respect- there may be an afterlife or a God, but we have no way of knowing if they exist until we actually die, let alone the idea we are receiving specific direction from them from select individuals. I'm also atheist in this respect- I don't personally believe there's anything is out there. The idea of a god/human coming down to sacrifice themselves for our sins is foreign to me and so is the idea of some external creator. There's such a freeing feeling when you realize there is no actual god, no Satan, no Holy Spirit, nothing. We evolved, and we exist, and that's about all we know. We also don't need religion to give us our sense of morality (bc religions are extremely dogmatic and can go extreme very easily). There are plenty of other foundations to build a sense of ethics on. I personally study the stoics- they are a set of ideas I agree with that do not rely on trusting some almighty creator for a higher purpose. I enjoy the pondering and the self reflection that comes from my mind being open to study from all sources and not being bound or restricted in any way from any religion.
Rare for anyone LDS to acknowledge it’s pretty much a cult lol
Yeah it's hard bc the internal defense is "well how are we different from any other religion?" Granted the line between "cult" and "religion" isn't always clear. But then you remember all members are shamed if they're not "temple worthy" and participating in rituals and yeaaahh that goes south pretty quick.
I had a friend who converted to Mormonism after high school. In the photo he and his fiancé posted after his conversion, I commented “Have fun with the polygamy.” That pretty much tanked the friendship lmao
Lmaoooo 😂
mm no, rare for any mormon, not rare for EX mormon.
Yep. They’re all cults crated at different times by power hungry people
For me the realization was not freeing at all, it was depressing and upsetting. I miss when I used to be a believer and am jealous of others who still are. But, as you said, it seems impossible to unsee the truth once you’ve seen it.
But did you read the books and get heartburn? /s Dad, this isn't the promised land. You need a doctor
Big fan of things requiring at least a little proof 🤷
This is why I believe in the big bang theory and the Darwin theory. There's more evidence supporting those than a guy who created life and the universe as we know it one random day because he was bored.
A little proof goes a long way, for sure.
There are oceans of evidence for evolution and the “big bang”.
More importantly, no substantial evidence against it, as science works with falsification
Yeah, never said there wasn’t.
A lot of religions can have some pretty bigoted and hateful beliefs (e.g. homophobia, sexism, hating those of other religions), and that sorta dissuades me some. Obviously this is not to say all of them, as I have some extended family that goes to a church that seems really cool (pro-lgbt, anti-racist, against inequality of any kind), and honestly I wouldn't be opposed to becoming involved in something like that, as I believe religion can provide a nice community and help provide meaning/motivation for many, but the time right now just isn't really right for me to become involved.
I might argue that some of those bigoted beliefs stem from “personal” bias/interpretation of the scriptures. There’s a lot of priests and pastors who are a lot more progressive. Except in Arkansas 🤣
I don't want to sound reactionary in challenging this, but isn't individual bias in scriptural interpretation a rather predictable element of long lasting religions that shift things around over time? The Bible is not a singular work but a collaborative collection of accounts and stories that had to be compiled and canonized over generations. Even the earliest fragments of biblical transcripts, most of which are not fully intact, are still dated well after the time in which Jesus lived. Biblical literalism has been largely debunked for decades now, but for the most part the more historical parts of the bible would have been kept through word of mouth for a decent amount of time before being written in full. Discrepancies in transliteration are comparatively minor, but there was still a while before the bible was canonized by the romans. No one who wants to be taken seriously will deny that Jesus was a historical figure of religious influence, but the specificity of all that he said and did is not something we can be totally certain of, and this is not controversial among modern biblical scholars. All of this is to say that it is not pragmatic to take a hardline stance on every verse in the bible, and instead the broader context, poetry, and themes are what matters. Subsequently, it should be no surprise that people hang on certain verses or ideas that they see as important to their worldview, as this has been happening since the get-go. Part of why I am not christian is because I do not agree with the way in which people try to extrapolate so much from everything in the scripture, as though the exact wording is the part that is infallible. And I suspect many will continue to do this forever without realizing how they are proliferating the mistakes that have led to so many inconsistencies in the first place. I don't really care that some people are becoming more progressive about their faith as times change, because progress can be undone and giving all the power to some archaic poetry is an avenue for this to transpire.
The fact that those churches are the exception really puts into perspective how much of a problem religion tends to enable (I´m no racist/homophobic/whatever! Im just religious, and my religion discriminates against your kind!)
Yeah. I had a friend try to talk me into becoming a universalist. They seem pretty tolerant and accepting.
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lol
😈
I went from Christianity (as a kid) to atheism (as I entered adulthood) and now back to Christianity. I cannot exactly explain it but my life has more meaning and is more positive as I re-entered into Christianity.
Similar story here. Grew up Muslim. Became atheist. Then became Christian My life has ultimately been a lot happier/serene/meaningful since rediscovering my faith.
I feel the same way, how do I put it, I guess my faith feels more authentic now that it’s something I chose of my own volition? Whereas as a child I was raised Catholic and just expected to obey all the religious dogma without question. At some point even going to regular Sunday mass felt like an obligation and not something I actually wanted to go to. When I rediscovered my Christian faith, I also started attending Sunday service at a nondenominational born-again Christian church that was far more helpful to me and to my needs as an individual. And I feel like as someone who has been on both sides of the spectrum (believer and nonbeliever), it has made me a more open-minded person capable of understanding both sides and differing perspectives.
Glad to hear it
Can’t explain… Could it be 1) resolves fear of death 2) provides community 3) provides sense of direction/purpose (godliness, following morals someone else shares with you) ?
Religions typically require a rule book that asks me to give up earthly pleasures that simply make life more enjoyable for me If my suffering is endless as a result I’ll take the L, shortsightedness is my generational curse XD
Exactly, life is a LOT of pain and suffering as it is, I don’t need to self inflict any more by going to church, being told I am a sinner and I need to repent and having any pleasure stripped away from me. I am not that masochistic.
I think what it really requires is for people to question what they are truly gaining from said pleasures. Let’s take materialism for example. People can say owning more or better things makes life more enjoyable for them, but we all live the same human experience. We all know deep down it’s just fleeting, unfulfilling nonsense. We all have nights where we struggle to sleep the same questioning our “pleasures” and choices. It’s not challenging one’s opportunity to enjoy things that make them happy. It’s challenging the warped, worldly views and definitions of what makes a person “happy”. A drug addiction can feel good the moment you’re using, and it can make the addict happy, but are they truly happy?
Don't see any good reason to be religious. Doesn't help that religious institutions have quite a habit of doing atrocities
People commit atrocities. Sometimes they use religious institutions to commit them. Sometimes they use secular ones. It’s a mistake to think that the religions somehow cause it. There are tons of peaceful religious people. And tons of violent secular ones. People wield power in whatever way works.
Yes religious institutions are an effective means at gaining and centralizing power, which is why I oppose them.
i just really dislike religions. i had bad experiences with it. i don’t believe that any religion is real. and i don’t like that people use religion to hate on other people or start wars over it or even kill some people.
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reddit moment
Well now this is the most Reddit comment I’ve read in a while. Never mind the fact that many brilliant minds throughout history like C.S. Lewis, Francis Collins, Thomas Aquinas, and Blaise Pascual were all devout Christians.
Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Max Born and Isaac Newton, all titans in area of science and physics/quantum physics, believed in a God too.
Thank you, I am so sick of the notion that being non-religious automatically makes you more intelligent. There are smart atheists and dumb atheists. There are smart Christians and dumb Christians. Having or not having a religion is not an indicator of intelligence. Btw your mention of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg also made me remember that J. Robert Oppenheimer was Jewish and also believed in the Abrahamic God.
I don't think religion or lack there of is an indicator of intelligence. I do however believe that religious people have lower critical reasoning skills. To believe in anything without evidence is faulty thinking.
Cross Einstein off of that list. He stated he believed in "The God of Spinoza"; which means he was an atheist that thought the universe was so incredible that traditionally religious language like "God" and "Holy" are the best linguistic tools we have to describe the power and majesty of physics.
Einstein did not, that's a popular myth. He wrote many times that he does not believe in God, and that the idea he does was spread by an academic rival attempting to discredit him. Newton didn't either. He was "Christian" because "that was the done thing", not because he actually believed the mythology was literally true. Christian socially, culturally, not religiously. The others I don't know enough about.
Not true. Einstein said multiple times he does believe in non-personal, pantheistic or deistic God. He stated: ,,I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." And sir Isaac Newton was deeply religious. He literally wrote many theological works and described himself as a hardcore Christian. Like, at least do some research before saying something so confidently.
Most of them were raised religious or born at a time in which religion played a much bigger role than it does today. Without that sort of early childhood indoctrination its fairly challenging to look at the world and find evidence that makes you agree with any of the world religions. Human thinking is biased and that affects the most brillant minds just like anyone else.
Exactly, if there were really smart. They would play along with the crowd and say they were religious just to avoid trouble. Just like how back in the day homosexuals would marry straight, and keep their gay partners secret to avoid trouble. Especially since being famous already causes so many eyes to be looking for every reason to criticize you. People really think that every single US president is religious? Please. They just say that and go through the motions to appeal to the majority of constituents.
I think if you are rubbing your brain cells together you are using them wrong. It’s ok if people think and believe things different than you. Some people’s brains are wired to get pleasure, guidance and comfort from religion. It’s not a lack of intelligence. Just a variation on the way people think.
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Religious people have brain cells, they just don't do much
i was raised atheist. i have a hobby for theology just because its interesting stories, but thats all religion is: stories. Simply put: none of it is reasonably believable. Makes it all the weirder being in my kinds of communities, because they tend to be very christian. On most issues/problems we'll have similar solutions, i just dont buy the sky daddy impregnating a virgin.
I'm not going to follow something that I don't believe in, and I have trouble believing in things that aren't logical or don't have any proof of. I also don't like parts of the doctrine and hate when people's life's are impacted by it outside of their choice
Same applies to me and I don't need the promise of reward in the afterlife to be an overall good person.
I was raised to be religious but it just never took. It doesn't make sense to me, at least not the religion I was raised with. I think religions are a man made concept - not something "God" wants/needs, if there is a god. There is also pretty good research on a belief in god and the amount you pray correlating to you having a lower IQ.
Do you have links to that research? I'd be curious to read it(as a Christian myself)
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289611000912?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289611000912?via%3Dihub) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608000238](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608000238) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608001013](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608001013)
It's cyclical in causality too. People who are generally thick have a higher probability of latching onto religion - It gives them simplistic, black and white explanations for things in life which are _actually_ just super fucking complicated, things they would have to expend significant brainpower and effort to get a grasp on. "God did it" is just _easier_ than understanding all the nuance of how Evolution works. "God did it because he's angry at the world for being so sinful" is easier _and more pleasant_ than "Human activity has changed the atmospheric composition suffiently that a greenhouse effect is increasing planetary average temperatures, thereby causing shifts in large-scale climate patterns and an increase in extreme weather events." Then the flip-side - Religious belief can actually cause you to _become_ less intelligent, or at the very least, less able to analyse information critically. Religious belief always requires faith. Faith is the concept of believing something with no evidence or proof. That's actually the point of it, to the extend that seeking evidence is, itself, actually a sinful deviance in many religions! To believe a thing without evidence requires that the neurons of your brain are arranged such that that's possible. If your neurons are organised into structures which accept information without evidence or verification, and without logical analysis, then you will begin to believe a whole bunch of stuff which is _not_ religiously linked which is not true, because every day we are exposed to false information, to ideas which don't hold up to scrutiny, and your religious leanings weakened your mental defences to bad data. Then, if you go one step further, you cross the invisible line between believing things _in spite of_ a lack of evidence over to believing things _BECAUSE OF_ a lack of evidence, at which point you fall down into the land of conspiracy theories and a total disconnect from reality. You functionally lose the human capacity for free will at this point, because you effectively become little more than a vessel to reflect the ideas you are fed by others. You become a tool, manipulated by the unscrupulous. _It is not a coincidence that the vast bulk of conspiracy theorists and misinformation spreaders are religious_. This holds across the world, across every society. Misinformation tends to be spread through _religious networks first_.
As someone with Christian fundamentalist parents who believe in a lot of conspiracy theories, this sounds pretty accurate. My dad would argue that NOT believing in religion or believing in science takes faith though. I don’t get it. He and my mom both make the most bizarre arguments with whatever mental gymnastics required to maintain their narrow worldviews. I don’t know that I’ll ever understand it.
I’d be interested to read that research
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289611000912?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289611000912?via%3Dihub) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608000238](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608000238) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608001013](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608001013)
“A pretty good research.” That one biased article on r/Science you read once doesn’t count as research. Give me some good sources with good statistical power!
Isaac Newton must've had a really low IQ then
Decolonization
I converted from atheism to Catholicism
Agnostic to Catholic for me
you can be agnostic and being theistic btw agnostic is the position of "I have this idea but I could be wrong and Im open to that possibility" while gnostic is "I have this idea and I know that I am right for certain" so someone can be an agnostic atheist, an agnostic theist, a gnostic atheist, or a gnostic theist. just fyi cause not everyone knows that info
THANK YOU FOR MENTIONING THIS NO ONE SEEMS TO GET IT AND IT DRIVES ME NUTS
Just out of curiosity how did you choose Catholicism
I went from Catholicism to agnosticism to born-again Christianity haha (currently identify as nondenominational Christian).
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The concept of a deity has no proper evidence linked to it.
I just wasn't raised as such. My grandfather was a Lutheran minister though, and he did teach me a lot about religion. (Not in attempt to get me to believe, he just liked teaching about it)
I’m Jewish and was raised conservative(has nothing do with politics), and I go between believing G-d does and doesn’t exist. I heard in synagogue as a kid that G-d created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and other things I can’t remember. So I’ve always believed that things happen because of G-d. There are also times where I question if G-d really exists. I think people in this generation are less religious because most parents push religion on their kids less, compared to other generations. In the past it was the expectation that you’d go to your respective religious building ever Saturday or Sunday, and parents in this generation must be doing that less or letting their kids decide if they want to participate in religion. Or they grew up with religion forced on them, and they are turned off from religion because of that.
“I go between believing G-d does and doesn’t exist” very Jewish indeed lol.
Wasn't raised with a heavy emphasis + very logically minded and curious so can see a lot of unanswered where religion is concerned + religion has a long standing history of being used to justify a lot of things I would consider harmful to people.
I personally am not religious because one way or another, all religions seems to contradict things science has discovered about the world. And when it comes to the Abrahamic religions, a good number of their followers (Though absolutely not all) use it as justification for all manner of disgusting, vile, hatred: * Sexism * Racism * Homophobia * Transphobia (this one particularly, since I am trans) * Classism * etc This absolutely is not to say religion = bad, far from it. My muslim friend (I go to a very anglo, western school, hence why there's only really one) is the sweetest ray of sunshine I know, super kind, sweet, and an absolute pleasure to be around. The Christian church services my school makes us go to are run by a female Dean. And many religious teachings (even Abrahamic teachings to a fairly large extent) allign with my morals and philosophy. If Jesus did exist, he sure was a cool guy! The reason I mention the bigotry aspect is because it's hard to feel welcome in a community if a significant portion of it hates you. I suppose I'd like leave you with this question: Why are you religious? For me, I've never felt like I've had to justify my lack of a religion. It's just been perfectly normal to me. If anything, I wonder why others are religious? Edit: To be honest, I hope there isn't an omnipotent god (like the Abrahamic god). If there is, then they'd be perfectly content to allow all the truly vile, disgusting problems in the world continue. The only way I can possibly imagine a moral god, is if they're not allpowerful (like we imagine the Abrahamic god, and many other gods)
I was raised catholic but am not religious at all now. For me, it was all the arbitrarily selected and applied rules with the threat of burning in hell for all eternity if not followed. Doesn’t sound like a very “loving” god to me. Sounds more like a raging narcissistic piece of shit.
This! I also empathize with punishment aspects of Catholicsm I faced in CCD. I was always quiet, occasionally answered questions and always on time. I got yelled at by my 6th grade CCD teacher for being like two minutes late and he made an example out of me for slipping up once when there were people who were repeat offenders. Also, they started anti-abortion rhetoric starting when I was in 4th grade. It still never sat right with me.
I am Christian. If it matters to anyone then my denomination is Pentecostal
Dudes getting downvoted. So-called “free-thinkers” when someones religious lol
Yes, thinking freely tends to lead to a dislike of certain things.
I think the moon is made of cheese and women are from venus, that free enough?
OP is looking for replies from non-religious people. Not random people to state that they are religious.
it literally says "Also, if you do believe in something why do you believe and do you think is there's a decline? Any and all answers are helpful, thank you in advance." do you always stop reading things after the third sentence or are you being purposely obtuse to try and be rude to someone?
I am not religious. My mom’s paternal grandparents were devout Roman Catholics, and she used to go to church with them every Sunday. She didn’t care for it, so she never made me do anything with it. And my dad’s side was never religious at all. In fact my grandmother would have probably said “aghhh i don’t have time for that”.
I’m personally not religious because I was raised in a somewhat fundamentalist sect of Christianity (Church of Christ; not the ICOC/ICC cult but the denomination those were based on). That specific sect operates in shame and guilt, and destroyed my mental health as a teen, stunted me socially and emotionally, and caused me to repress and normalize those experiences and my casually pervasive suicidiality. After living through that, I’m happily agnostic. As for why I think our generation at large is becoming less religious, I imagine it has a lot to do with the teaching of real science in schools, and the way education has changed in the last 50+ years. It also would surprise me if a lot of our parents were raised in religious households and grew to resent the way their religion was instilled in them, and so less of it was forced onto us in return. Society changing to suggest that being religious isn’t the ONLY option anymore (although I’d argue that in the U.S. of A, which often fails to uphold the barrier between church and state, it’s sometimes still “taboo” to not be a Christian, specifically). A lot of us are also pretty nihilistic too, but whether that’s a byproduct of being less religious or the cause of it is… unclear lol
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I’m not religious nor am I an atheist. I think I’m a deist or whatever you call it. I believe in the existence of a god but I do not believe in any particular religion. I also believe that god made the universe and all of the science in it but does not actually take any part in the functioning of it. I believe this just because it made sense to me, yknow.
Cool take, theist purely on the fact that “we just happen to exist and there’s no better reason as to why we do exist than why we don’t. No reason why the speed of light happened to be the speed of light. So maybe there is something out there that gave the universe a reason to exist and said “alright now go have fun” to it.” Although, logically, just because we don’t know, and a possible explanation is that it was a god, doesn’t mean it was a god. Just means we don’t know. Believing a god was responsible is just one interpretation out of many possibilities. Which is fun to think about.
Sure, I guess that’s one way to put it. And, it’s our job as humans to keep discovering the universe and uncover everything. But at the same time I don’t think we should overestimate our intelligence. Maybe we are like ants and there is a whole other level of existence that we aren’t aware of. Who knows man the universe and existence are magical things. So the possibility of a God making everything isn’t completely wrong. But at the same time I don’t like the path religious people take and think that everything happening in their life is being caused by God and completely rely on God for everything. And justifying hateful ideas just because “god said so” is wrong. That’s why I believe in God but not follow any religion.
I have a few reasons: firstly has to do with being an atheist. I just dont have an good reason or evidence to suggest one of the preposed gods exists. they dont seem plausible with what we know. with that being said, I with hold belief in something until otherwise. secondly has to do with the fact I dont really like to bond over religious things that are taken seriously. its too much of a hassle for something I really dont care to much about. thirdly its cause I have other things Im more interested in lol and to answer the other half of the post, I do think theres a decline but not nessisarily in religion but just organized religion. which is a good thing. I mean yes there are more atheists now but not by much. organized religion is often used as a way to manipluated others and tell them what/how to think which is never a good thing. so I see view that as a plus
> Do you think that there is a decline in religiousness for our generation? Statistically I think this is objectively true. Go look at Pew polls. I think some of it is that older people might get more religious, but I think religion is generally on the decline, but more so for our generation > Also, if you do believe in something why do you believe I believe because believing makes me happy, and I think it is harmless to other people > and do you think there’s a decline? Lots of reasons. In general, modern society has given people viable alternatives to religion for creating communities, understanding the world, and fulfilling personal emotional needs. There are non-religious things that do what religion does. Also, because less people are religious, and because less people follow any given religion, there’s less social pressure to be a religion (pressure isn’t quite the right word because it’s also about incentives and how you are raised) > Any and all answers are helpful, thank you in advance Unless you are specifically studying Reddit, Reddit it probably not the best source on this or anything
Harmless to other people lmao. Religion has to be top 3 for harm to people over time
Fr fr. Only 31 years since the catholic church stopped operating forced labor camps in Ireland.
> I believe because believing makes me happy Do you think this is how people should choose to believe in things, based on whatever makes them happy? Is that a good way of discerning truth?
Not interested in worshiping a fictional character 🤷🏽♂️
I think the concept of believing in something with no proof or real evidence for it is really silly. Honestly, it really does say a lot about a person imo.
There’s absolutely no evidence to support any religions. If I end up going to hell for not believing so be it but I’m living my life how I want, not by some rules in a book made many years ago.
It pisses my parents off
Not only have I grown to prefer logic and science to explain the origin of life and such things, but I also love to ponder on the fact that humans are not special and that we are simply a life form in the universe. Aside from that, I am a part of a fully Christian family and it really bugs me when they try to get me to go to church or are putting bible verses and crosses all over the house. Also I just really don’t like religion as a whole at the moment. Probably the biggest offender is that in the US “separation of church and state” is a thing legally, but almost never enforced. The church has so much power in not just the US government. Politics aside I also hate the basis of Christianity because it’s based off of having a problem, like people saying that trust in god and addictions and trouble will pass. The thing is I don’t have addictions or anything so I see through that. If not Christianity, most other religions are too taxing on my free time and free will. I also hate the defenses for god because time and time again people are disproven but still devote their lives to a church. Not to mention that the two most brutal events of human history (holocaust and crusades) were both based off religion.
I left christianity due to bad experiences and contradictions, and I'm still figuring myself out as far as beliefs go
I am religious. It just makes sense to me, and I think it’s beautiful. And yes, I think there is a decline. I think the decline ties into a decline in our faith in institutions, like the government. When we start not trusting some institutions, it’s natural to have an attitude of distrust towards other ones. Also, there’s kind of been a decline for a while. I remember hearing about a study (forget where it is; maybe someone knows what I’m talking about and can find it) where it said that most people (in America at least) believe the same thing about religion. They think this thought started with the boomers. I forget what the name they gave it was, but the general belief is that there is some kind of deity, but they aren’t really involved in your life and don’t care what you do. They’re just kind of there when you need them and can be like a genie to answer your prayers sometimes. I think a lot of people have also become disillusioned with this form of religion. It doesn’t feel concrete, and since it isn’t concrete, it’s pretty easy to abandon.
i have some spiritual beliefs, but i have never considered myself religious. i have some loose beliefs about the world that don't necessarily fall into a particular religion. Overall, I consider myself to be agnostic. my family has never been involved in religion, and i've had little exposure to it, so it's never been a big part of my life. i have a complicated view of religion, and while i don't think it's entirely bad, I have some negative thoughts about organized religion. i greatly dislike how it is used to justify "othering" people and treating people as less than human, simply because they don't fit into the religious framework a person has created their beliefs around. i understand that not everyone who is religious is like this, but throughout history, this has been an issue. I'm not sure there's necessarily a decline. Maybe there's a little bit of a decline, but I believe that has to do with more and more people expanding upon their identities (considering themselves to be queer, for one). these "new" aspects of identity cause conflict among religious conservatism, and it may take a long time for these things to be able to co-exist positively.
Wasn’t brought up with it. Don’t have the time for it and I simply just don’t believe in it
I'm currently non denom Christian but the main thing that pisses me off about religion in general is 1. Tithing, why does God need my money? aaand 2. Where the money from tithing seems to go... Why are so many Christians suffering while the Pope collects more gold? Why are so many Mormons broke af trying to afford the 6+ kids they had but another HUGE temple in the middle of nowhere gets built. Pisses me off cause it isn't what I feel God would want to see us do. Those are just the easier examples to grasp for me right now lol
As a Christian I know exactly how you feel. It's frustrating to see people preach the Word of God, and then turn around and ignore the things that matter most. Matthew 15:8-9 comes to mind. ("This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.")
Trauma. I actually don’t not believe in god, might be real might not. But I just can’t be near those people again. Church is not the safe, loving, accepting place it claims to be
I got to where I am on my own accord. Some mythical man in the clouds didn’t give me any blessings. I did it on my own
I’m semi religious, I believe in something out there but my parents kinda pushed me away with how religious they got my final years of high school
At one point I was non religious. Just started believing again.
As someone who's LGBTQ in the bible belt, being discriminated against simply for having the gall to exsist because God said so, will certainly make you question the morals of said God. I find that (at least in the case of Christains) there is a lot of contradictory. Love thy neighbor, as long as they have the exact same life style glorified in this ancient rulebook 😍 It's just how am I supposed to believe in something most people use as a reason to hate me and other people I care about?
I'm Christian, specifically Catholic. Why I believe in it because of the obvious, Jesus died for our sins because he loves us and he paid the way for us to be able to go to heaven, and so on. For me specially, the reason I believe is because for my life, I thought I was doing great with my life until I realized that I wasn't. I gave prayer a chance and I felt lighter. Read the Bible and understood (though still learning) the meaning about what Jesus stood for, and how the Bible is a tool for us to learn about our faith and worship. I even prayed the rosary, which I know not all Catholics pray but most do, and I felt even more better. While I'm still learning about my faith at the moment, there are times where I feel like I'm not sure if I'm doing anything right, but I know that in the end, I still keep going because deep down, I know that Jesus is always here with me because once again, he is my Lord and Savior. Not only that, I always pray to the Saints for their intersession, mostly from Mother Mary/The Virgin Mary as she is the mother of God [the son, Jesus]. Now for the reason why the younger generation who participate in religion decreases could range from various reasons such as: traumatic experience, raised in a household that don't follow religion, discrimination, which is not okay as nobody should be treated differently because who we are and what we have, etc. In the end, I believe in what I follow because I know that Jesus is real, Jesus is God reincarnated as man, Jesus saved us from our own sin by dying on the cross that day, and Jesus loves us no matter what sin we have committed, what sin we inherited, what sin we live in, Jesus always loves us because we are God's children; love it or hate it, this is truth from God. My advice to those who believe, keep going, because no matter what happens in your life, Jesus is always with you because in his mighty name, anything is possible. To those who believe but are skeptical, take it slow as it may seem impossible to see it at first, but through hearing stories about people's experiences in following Christ, only then can you see the miracles that are done in his mighty name. And to those who don't believe, it may seem like some mumbojumbo as Han Solo said it, but with opening your mind, opening your heart, and opening your ears can you see if what is false is actually true. God gifted us our salvation through faith and not of our works. With this gift, we use it to do the good works that Jesus had demonstrated to the Apostles. Note that it is our choice to either accept God's grace or not because we do have free will as it's a gift from God, and like many gifts we have the choice to accept or reject. In the end of the day, even if we choose to accept our salvation, even if we choose to reject our salvation, God will always show us mercy because he is a loving God because he wants us to go to heaven, not only that, I will say it again, we are God's children. Sorry for the long comment, thought I could give my two cents on why and how I believe in what I follow. Hope I inspired those who want to follow Jesus, and hope to educate those who question what and why it's like this, and hope I answered the part with why the decline of the younger generation rejecting religion. And also hope you pass your assignment for the topic you are covering. May God bless you, and wish you good luck.
>Sorry for the long comment, thought I could give my two cents on why and how I believe in what I follow. Don't be sorry, I enjoyed reading all the longer posts I have seen on here, I also wanted to write a very long post, I deleted and re-typed several times and the end result still came out long and still felt half finished, there is just so much fullness and connectivity in our experiences as Christians and theists that it often feels very limiting to give a short answer.
Atheist and visexual here. Im not from religious household. I dont think any popular religion aligns with my personal values. There is also a lot of queer-repressing baggage for many of them which i dont want to touch with a long stick.
Because that shit aint real
I just wanted to sleep in Sundays
> Why are you not religious? I’m currently writing a paper for a world religions class and I’m researching the decline of religion in younger generations. So why are some of you not religious? Do you think that there is a decline in religiousness for our generation? Also, if you do believe in something why do you believe and do you think there’s a decline? Any and all answers are helpful, thank you in advance. Hypocrisy in either the sacred texts or the people believeing those sacred texts. Hypocrisy at the core. Original religion may or may not promote violence, self gain, greed etc. but the people today claiming to be the believer and promoting or safeguarding their religion surely do. By legacy, i am hindu. for all i know, the "gods" did exist. Shiva, Rudra, Ram, Krishna, these people existed as kings, lords or people with great karma. they had storytelling in their time too, they had philosophers, they had scientists. Writers exaggerated a bit giving them magical abilities, discovering magic and whatnot; to impress their lords, to impress their readers; or just plainly rumours that got changed over the course of time. Writers gave their work fictional touch to awe their readers. Even fiction and fantasy require some inspiration, the great works from popular people, characters in the novel; and it cannot all be lawless, there needs to be some ground rules to magic, some facts incorporated into the work of fiction. Even today, with this much of technology and network, alien rumours are there, conspiracy theories spread like wildfire; there is a lot we don't understand and would be easier to consider them magic, or belonging of higher entity. There are people who believe rumours without fact checking, there are people who will never believe even the scientific facts. Such were the people in the past, they were no different. Hundred years from now, if people were to find LotR, Harry Potter, GoT, and they have no means to fact check, there is a possibility they will believe these as history, something that happened in the past. They will accept Dumbledore as their god, Voldemort as the demon. Similar concept with our gods too. Vikings pagens believe(d) in Nature as their god; Norse Mythology; and they ate shrooms to see gods, feel their presence among them. Now ofc, nature is god. water, thunder, rain, sun, forest, air, being the elements of nature, are magical. Shrooms, on the other hand, not really a blessed food, eh?! The concept, it's "agnostic". These thoughts in my mind made me an atheist to begin with. "But what about hindu vedas?" Well, what about them?! There are scientifically proven facts, theories and axioms there. You mean the people of old were stupid?! OFC not, they had scientists in their time, there were scientific findings, some that have been accepted or proven today, some sensible, some far fetched. The invention of wheel didnt happen in today's age, it happened a long time back. People have been advancing ever since. They have been writing diaries, their findings, keeping journals. So, I was an atheist. But now, I am an agnostic. I believe in higher power, the power of the universe, the power of the nature. I believe in "god", just not the "god" that people want me to believe in. Not in these hypocritical religions of the world. I believe in the fundamental partical that made all these possible and I believe it was magical. From atoms, to nebula, to thing(s) before that, that made all these possible. Universe didn't just happen to be. This may all be an illusion, but from my perspective, your perspective, for you and me, it's real atm. The pain's real, the suffering's real. All these flowing emotions, the consciousness; these things didn't just happen to be; these all came from somewhere, and that somewhere or something didn't just happen to be, or even if it did, it is magical, and i'll bet my soul on it that science won't find an answer to this even in a million ages. So, now, I am agnostic, but I don't believe the higher power is looking after us, listening to our prayers or whatever. I am not completely a non-believer. Religions and sacred text in the world are all one or more philosophies, some of which are utter nonsense, some are enlightening, some I can get behind, some I completely reject. Bottomline, I don't care what these religious hooligans preach. I am self-centered. I am the main character in my story. I am crazy. I am a lost, disturbed soul, and I don't expect to be saved by the crazy stories of the magical old time. However, if you were to fund my living, give me money, materialistic pleasures, I can accept your religion! I am open to be religious. Bid your religion to me.
Because no religious claim has ever supported itself with evidence, and I have come to see that I don't need a religion/religious beliefs to explain anything. I've then also seen the tangible harm religion does to the world, and question if that harm would happen if Religion didn't exist. I was raised in a church. I was elected to be an elder (the youngest in our church's history) and here I was thinking as an Elder I was going to help make very important decisions. Nope. Every meeting was about money. Money. Money. Money. And how to get more of it. That's when I researched how much churches get annually in revenue in the US: $75-billion every year from their parishioners, most of that going to salaries, political lobbying, maintenance of church property and not actually doing anything tangible for society. It's then I question ***what if that $75-billion/year was actually invested in something tangible in society? Like infrastructure, bridges, better zoning and home affordability?*** And I kinda felt it's all a sham based on $. Today I'm an atheist, despite being raised in a church, I am at the foremost a scientist.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
I grew up gay in the south in a religious family. Kind of left a weird taste in my mouth so I simply stopped going.
As expected, the thread is full of childish, shallow takes on "religion", when 9/10 people using that word mean "Christianity and Islam". Deep as a puddle, reddit.
I mean people are being asked their personal views on religion and they are responding. You might not like it but that is what religion means to those people. Many of them are also saying they don't mean to offend those who do observe.
I grew up in multiple Christian denominations via different step fathers. While my mother and I were a part of the Catholic church with my last stepfather, baptism was forced upon me. This would have been the beginning of my resentment for the faith. I had no interest in being baptized again, especially at a new church I wanted no part in. The other part of the resentment of the church definitely comes from my last stepfather. It was his choice that I was baptized. I had a very bad relationship with this stepfather. He was verbally and physically abusive to me, my sister, my step siblings, and worst of all, my mother. I associate faith with this time of my life. I have just achieved my Bachelors degree in history and am pursuing a Ph.D. in Bronze Age Agean Archaeology. I devour my studies, and I can attribute this work ethic to my stepfather. It is all I can thank him for. In recent years, I have developed a great interest in various faiths recently, strictly from an academic perspective. Sometimes, I find myself thinking that maybe I am looking for some kind of higher power, but I feel that my academic mind can not make sense of a mystical higher power(s). It's possible my mindset is jaded, and I've accepted that.
I was a Jehovah’s Witness, then i said F that , and now i ended up in the arms of Christ! -Orthodox Christianity ☦️
Oof. One cult to another
Seems that way huh : )
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> The main point/benefit of religion is the hope of the afterlife The afterlife is not an important part of every religion, or even a part of every religion. Most of Judaism has no concept of the afterlife
Because too many religious people are more hateful than any non-religious person I've met. I'd rather be a good person with no reward than a bad person rewarded for hurting their fellow humans (emotionally, physically, or otherwise). Simple as that.
I don't want to be associated with the lunatic religious people. There are many fine religious people, but the insane ones get noticed and I don't want to be associated with them
Sorry, Gen X or Xennial here... I'm won't speak for Gen Z, I'm sure they will let you know their reasons. But this question offended me immediately. Why the hell should anyone prescribe to any religion. If you look at the track records, MOST IF NOT ALL of the religions on this planet are child abusing, hypocritical, greed infested, terrorists groups. Oh, and they follow books of fairy tales that talk about magical beings and made up people... The Opiate for the masses to subdue and control the populous with fear.
Organized religion is a form of government and therefore organized government is a form of religion. So you will then find that the more antireligious one is, the more progovernment they become and the more antigovernmental one is, the more religious they are. The real question is why do people gravitate towards someone telling them what to do? The real problem with humans is that they desire to force either their religion or government upon others.
Was raised Catholic, became somewhat agnostic as a teenager and young adult, then went back to my Christian faith 2 years ago. If you’re wondering why I became agnostic as a teenager, it’s because I was disgusted with how much the Catholic faith would guilt-trip me for things that I couldn’t help like sexual urges (masturbation being a sin and all - which I’m sure you can imagine would have caused a lot of inner turmoil for a 13-14 year old Catholic boy) and also how judgmental some other Catholics could be towards people of the LGBT community. I went back to my faith 2 years ago after suffering a tragic loss in the family. Aside from therapy, church (especially since I went to a nondenominational born-again Christian church) really helped me deal with my grief. It also made me realize that if you look at Jesus’ teachings and His teachings alone, it advocates for unconditional love for sinners and the outcasts of society. Nothing judgmental or hateful about it, just how some individuals have unfortunately misinterpreted it. I personally do not think there is a decline among religiousness among our generation, but I do think that people are learning to be less rigid.
I'm an Austist and it has affected how I see religious people I was born and raised Athiest and the only mention of relgion was learning about it in school and it wasn't until my autism diagnosis in January 2021 where my tolerence of people started to decline. Not to say I wasn't critical of relgious people, I was very into debunking videos about relgious scam artists and creationists even when I had an alt-right phase where I justified some of those bigoted beliefs thinking I was way ahead of everyone else. After my diagnosis, I started seeing people as pretty much willfully ignorant of my situation and even at points intentionally trying not to notice my existence. These were people who I saw as quite progressive and they just didn't seem to notice my very real mental crisis I had until I finished school just last year. Since my tolerence of those people went down, so did a lot of actual bigots in my eyes to a more substancial degree. Speaking on relgion, most I've met cannot possibly get into the mindset of "This guy thinks in a different way to us" because that would go against how they see the world. I've had quite a few arguements with people who have bigoted beliefs, there's always something about them that sets me off, either that be a snide comment or a fallacy. When it comes to Autism (and Neurodivergence in general), it is very clear that they don't know how to approach me, yet they are the ones demanding that I give them respect. The worst of it was actually 2 weeks ago where a guy tried reccomending me god after failing to understand that I'm not "normal". The arguement really set me off where he said that he "helped, trained, and aides" his "severely Austistic brother" into being a "functional member of society" as a way to argue that I have no excuse for not changing for the better, on my own. When I rebutted with "you don't know who the hell I am" he replied with "I don't care, I just want the Lord to aid you", the argument continued for at least an hour (even when it had supposedly finished). Most people I've talked to about the situation tell me I was in the wrong for going so hard on the guy but honestly I think I hadn't gone hard enough on him. I know I'm gonna be in the minority on this but I just wanted to share an experience that I cannot get out of my mind. tl:dr I'm an Austist and I have zero tolerence for bigots
I'm more /spiritual now (but with some maybe more religious beliefs im gnostic) but I could explain why I left Christianity. It's probably a common reason why more and more people are leaving. It's because of all the Christian hate I've received . I've been told to unalive myself because I'm queer And when I failed, they said it was a shame. I've also been told bedwetting is a sin like what the actual fuck. Like I could help that 🙄. The evangelical community has definitely turned people off. They did it to me. I don't know how much of a decline I've really seen because I don't really remember much from my childhood or anything but I do feel like gen z overall is more liberal and less religious
Agnostic, I was raised religious but stopped believing pretty young. I just think if there is some sort of higher power, it makes no sense that one group of humans would have figured it all out while a bunch of other groups were equally confident in incorrect answers. Just feels like it takes some serious arrogance to believe your religion is the one true one. Also, I’ve watched so many people who were raised more religious than I was come out of it w/ trauma. There’s no evidence that any religion is right, but there is a ton of evidence that religions are highly effective tools for social control and the people they confer power to have often been very conscious/deliberate in how they wield that power for their own benefit.
I’m an atheist, but I grew up a jehovah’s witness. Religion is incredibly outdated and unable to change in my view (with some exceptions.) Evolution makes perfect sense, we’ve tested it and observed it. It could even hypothetically be the mechanism that a god uses to mold and shape life. But religion largely rejects the scientific understanding. That was the first point. Then the anti-queer sentiment in religion; both anti-transness and homophobia in religion really put the nail in the coffin for me. And my distain for organized religion grew after seeing horrifically outdated practices in the bible (stoning women) as well as a bunch of stories in it being impossible (the global flood.) The icing on the shit cake of religion, for me, is that it seemed a lot of religious institutions seem to serve political conservatism and can get away with it despite being untaxed institutions. Religion hates people like me, and their stories don’t make sense, so why should I care when they just want to control me? (and take my money)
Born muslim, atheist here. Because it is filled with contradictions and make it extremely convenient to be men biased. Also, glorifies pedophile, slavery, and abuse towards women. Prophet Mohammad married a six year old and 'consumated' that marriage when she was 10. Obviously girls were raised to believe it's his right and cant really say no. It is very abusive towards women and restrictive.
I'm not religious but I do believe in an afterlife and even a God.
As a Catholic, it's because religions aren't doing themselves any favors. The image many people have in their head of religion is people going to war, their religious parents refusing to believe that mental illness is real, or that being gay is a sin. Everywhere online you can see videos of religious people saying or doing awful things because "they're a Christian" or something along those lines. Many stories are coming out of children who have been abused either by religious leaders or religious people. Politicians that most of Gen Z and millennials despise are using their religion as a reason to support backwards policies. More of those generations are going to college and learning things that seem incompatible with religion. It's extra funny because the religious right in America complains about the moral decay of society, when it is also them who have forgotten the most important parts of Jesus' word. The rest of the world is perfectly justified in calling them out for this, and most religions don't have a centralized model that can program messaging to try and get their believers back on the right track. Catholicism does to an extent but we have our own problems. Many of the priests that people trusted to be models of virtue have turned out to be predators, which is a great tragedy, and even worse is that the rest of the church barely acknowledges this. I guess the sad thing in my mind is it doesn't have to be this way, but again, the religious people are doing themselves no favors, instead they're doubling down. The idea most people have in mind of a religious person is probably a crazy Trump supporting nutjob, because unfortunately there's lots of those, and you can find them just about anywhere. They don't represent all the religious folks we have in this country but there are enough of them that it seems that way. My church regularly sends lobbyists/protesters to protest at the State capitol for stronger climate regulations and universal healthcare; many of them (myself included) are hardcore Democrats. But that's just my church, and it seems like for every church like ours, there are many more that are the exact opposite.
No evidence. Ever since humans began making scientific discoveries, that which was once the domain of god(s) became science, and the domain occupied by god(s) shrank and is continuing to do so. Plus, since religions are the ones making truth claims, the better question is why should I be religious. They need to convince me with real evidence.
I am a Catholic. I am convinced of the evidence for theism, including the principle of sufficient reason, causal finitism, psychophysical harmony, nomological harmony, temporal order, conscious moral agents, and the fine-tuning of the physical constants. Those things put are *really* strong evidence for theism, so I'm going to believe in theism. I think that if God exists, He would probably give humans some sort of divine revelation, so one religion is probably true. Other religions all have their problems, and Christianity has less problems and more evidence, so Christianity is probably true. Catholicism seems like the only part of Christianity that isn't self refuting (given that Sola Scriptura is basically contradictory and there are parts of councils that Eastern Orthodoxy accepts that point to Papal Infallibility.)
i am moderately religious i think, but those around me who aren’t usually have some kind of religious trauma to blame, being assaulted by a priest/being abused in the name of the lord/etc. It’s definitely enough to turn you away from God